Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman.

And I'm Ellie Anderson.

Welcome to Overthink.

The podcast were two friends, who are also professors, put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.

Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

Ellie, there is a story going around online about Socrates.

Supposedly, he had a triple filter test for gossip. A citizen would come up to him

and tell him something. And then Socrates had three questions that he would ask before he decided

if he wanted to hear the gossip. And the three questions are, is it true? Is it positive? And is it useful? And upon

meeting none of those conditions, the underlying presumption there being that gossip is idle bullshit

slander, he would disregard the value of the gossip and the ethics of having brought that to his attention.

Oh my God. It's like a water filter. This filters out these three different levels of toxins.

So this is almost certainly not true. Socrates would not have had a triple filter test.

First of, the dude claimed to know nothing anyway.

And so the idea that he would have some like schematized test is totally ridiculous.

And in looking at the references to this online, right, it's like a medium pop psychology article and just like all this random stuff.

So I feel pretty confident in saying that this is gossip about Socrates.

The triple filter test that Socrates had for gossip is nothing but gossip.

So meta.

But I don't know.

Even if it is not true that he ever presented this test,

I can kind of see it fitting into the rationalism of his way of thinking because he does want people

...